The productive history of
ILV is exemplary, if
we measure it by the scientific contributions which, in the
brief span of forty years, it has made to the knowledge of the
Native American languages; in phonology, grammatical structure,
semantics, and practical aspects of teaching.
William Townsend,
founder of the Institute, began his career as a linguist among
the Cakchiquels of Lake Atitlán. He translated the Bible
into their language, started schools and achieved renown by
inventing the Psychophonemic method for teaching monolingual
Indians to read.

Moisés Sáenz, a Mexican educator who
supported, in theory and practice, the mystique of the rural
school and its intransigent mode of teaching, traveled to
Guatemala in 1931, determined to learn the identity of the
American Indian in his various forms. In Panajachel he ran into
Townsend. He watched with profound admiration and was
immediately convinced of the benefits of the methods that the
linguist was using for teaching literacy among the local
population. The results of teaching in the mother tongue could
not have been more positive. Sáenz and Rafael
Ramírez were the recognized fathers of the rural school
system which grew out of the Revolution, and the pillars on
which rested the theory of incorporation of the Indian into
civilization, the assimilationist view that encouraged the
direct teaching of Spanish and the replacement of the
native culture by the modern national culture. With the
evidence of the work of the missionary linguist placed before
his eyes, Sáenz made an about-face which transformed
him, surprisingly, into the most powerful convert to the use of
the indigenous language as an instrument of teaching, and he
invited Mr. Townsend to work in Mexico. Townsend accepted this
invitation, and by 1934, he settled among the Nahuatl people of
Morelos.

Another historical accident favored Townsend's efforts
and led to happy results. During one of the frequent tours that
President Lázaro
Cárdenas took through the rural areas of the
Republic, he passed through Tetelcingo, the place where
Townsend was working in order to begin the difficult task of
learning and teaching in the vernacular language.
Cárdenas found the American linguist spending his time
teaching the beginnings of literacy to the monolingual children
and adults of the area. He was favorably impressed and offered
Townsend support so that he could extend his work to other
ethnic groups. Townsend and Cárdenas developed, from
that moment on, a friendship which led Townsend, when the
expropriation of the petroleum industry was enacted in 1938, to
be the first to declare himself in favor of it, and in its
defense, he undertook a journey to the chambers of the highest
officials and representatives of the people of the neighboring
country to the north, to its universities and cultural centers,
and in the course of this discussion, he authored polemics and
gave lectures to clarify the causes and reasons that moved
Mexico to reclaim as her own the energy sources which had been
held by the international cartels. The monopolists of the
mass-communications media had erected a wall, blocking the
Mexican government from informing world opinion about the
justice of that unusual act, carried out in the free exercise
of its sovereignty, which had shaken the established power
structure. Cárdenas never forgot this expression of
courage and solidarity, whereby the missionary linguist put on
the line not only his own prestige but the future of his
enterprise, during those fateful days for Mexico.

Encouraged by the president, Townsend founded
the Summer Institute of Linguistics
as an establishment for
recruitment and training of missionary linguists, and over the
course of the years he placed the graduatesmarried
couples, as a rulein a hundred ethnic groups. There they
have lived together with the inhabitants of the place for
lengthy periods, in some cases settling permanently in a
village without services, a place of poverty and hostile
terrain. The linguists have learned the indigenous language to
perfection, analyzing the structure, collecting the vocabulary,
the phonetics, and the meanings, and they have given the spoken
words a written expression using the symbols of the Spanish
alphabet. Furthermore, they have built up an impressive
bibliography, basically composed of linguistic studies of the
highest academic caliber, covering all of the Native American
languages still spoken in the country. To these things they
have added the production, still on-going, of manuals for
language learning, primers for teaching, dictionaries and
vernacular literature, everything from the smallest pamphlet
explaining agricultural or sanitary practices to the voluminous
translation of the New Testament. Never in the history of
Mexico, not in the Colonial period nor during the age of
Independence, has any institution, whether religious or
secular, native Mexican or foreign, been able to boast of a
loftier contribution to the understanding and the
transformation of our linguistic situation.